Sharing lifelong learning lessons is essential for Europe’s future, landmark Cardiff EU conference hears
Cardiff was the venue recently for a very successful cooperation between the Welsh Assembly Government and DGEAC under the UK’s presidency of the European Union. The results and recommendations of the high level lifelong learning conference, “Mobilising Experience Transferring Best Practice in Learning in Europe” will contribute to the development of DG EAC’s new Lifelong Learning programme (2007-13), as well as helping to shape the development during 2006 of the European Commission's strategy and guidelines on exploitation and dissemination of results for future project promoters and policy makers. The central themes of the two day conference in Cardiff, which attracted some 150 specially targeted delegates, were the need to find ways of increasing the impact of EU-funded education and training programmes and thus demonstrate good use of finite public resources; as well as to highlight the importance which regions, such as Wales, have in encouraging this. The Welsh Assembly Government linked with post -16 education body ELWa to stage the major conference, welcoming leading representatives from across Europe, including the European Commission, Ministers for Education, policy makers and stakeholders, as well as a wide range of people with EU-funded projects from as far afield as Estonia and Malta. The key messages, which came out of the conference, were the need to create IT and other tools to create a market, bringing together demand for and supply of project results and ideas, the need to provide more support to assist small organisations with little capacity and the need for the European Commission, project support agencies and projects themselves, to each take responsibility for increasing the impact of project results. Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning for Wales, Jane Davidson, who opened the conference, said: “The Mobilising Experience conference represents a wonderful opportunity for education specialists from across Europe to come together to discuss and share examples of best practice. "As a Minister from a small country, I know that it is impossible to learn everything you need to know within your own borders. It is essential to learn lessons from the experiences of others and to take advantage of the results of European projects and programmes. “This will help us achieve our goal of making Wales a world leader in education. The conference represented a real chance for delegates to share their experiences and learn from others." The conference made delegates aware of the plans by the European Commission to make ‘dissemination and exploitation’ of project results a key requirement for all those who intend to apply for funding from its integrated Lifelong Learning programme, due to run 2007-13.
Future bidders will need to plan and demonstrate requirements for gathering and sharing good practices from EU-supported projects, research the needs and demands for their products, evaluate the potential to transfer their results, make the results easily accessible to others and ultimately make a difference at policy level. Several illustrations of this were presented at the conference workshop and exhibition, for example, Jive Partners, a partnership of organisations in England, Wales and across Europe who, as a direct result of its EU-funded project, won major DTI funding to set up a UK-wide information centre to promote women into engineering, science and technology related jobs. Details of these and the other examples presented at the Conference can be found at
www.elwa.org.uk/mobilisingexperience.
David Hughes, Member of the Cabinet of Ján Figel, EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, explained the reason behind the new EU requirements, arguing that there was an urgent need for education and training systems to modernize and adapt to meet the social and economic challenges facing Europe. Mr Hughes said: “The European Community itself can play a key supporting role in the modernisation of education and training by supporting conferences and exhibitions such as this and by putting in place networks for Member States to learn from each other’s approaches. “Nobody has a monopoly on good practice and sometimes it takes an outside impulse to make us see that there are different - and perhaps better - ways of teaching and learning than the ones we currently use.” Alice Copette, Head of the Dissemination and Exploitation of Results Unit within DG Education and Culture, outlined the Commission’s approach to developing systematic exploitation of project results and made an impassioned plea for a shift in promoters’ and programme managers’ thinking from passive project administration to a more dynamic focus on meeting user needs. ‘It is not acceptable for products developed with public money to end up languishing in cupboards. The successful use and application of completed products and results is the concern of us all’. ELWa Deputy Chief Executive Mike Hopkins, said he was proud to see Wales again taking a central role in the crucial debate over education and learning and highlighting the important role regions such as Wales have in encouraging this. “This conference has demonstrated approaches which we can follow to avoid a costly situation in which we end up replicating past projects and, in effect, re-inventing the wheel.” Other speakers from the high-profile line-up included: Hans van Aalst, President of the European Forum of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (EfVET) and Prof Karen Evans of the Institute of Education at the University of London, who addressed theoretical aspects of knowledge management and productivity and comparative learning respectively; Rosemary Bulter, Welsh Assembly Member and member of the Committee of the Regions and Prof Paolo Federighi of the University of Florence, who gave different perspectives on the actual and potential role of the regions in promoting exploitation of results; and Seigfried Williams, Head of the Netherlands Leonardo da Vinci National Agency, and Fiora Imberciadori, of the Italian Socrates Agency, who presented practical ideas and approaches for ensuring that better use of project results can become a reality.
Gianfranco Simoncini, Minister for Education, Training and Employment, Tuscany, closed the event declaring that ‘modernisation’ of education and training systems would, as demonstrated successfully by the conference, only be possible if people worked in partnership to ensure the efficient transfer of knowledge.
Mobilising Experience – Transferring Best Practice in Learning in Europe Cardiff 29-30 November 2005 Key objectives of the conference were to:
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Raise awareness of the European Commission’s prospective Integrated Lifelong Learning programme (2007-13) and its requirements; Raise awareness – though case studies and exhibits- of current EU-Funded lifelong learning projects; Share experience on successful, methods to harness and exploit results from EUfunded lifelong learning projects; Identify tools needed to help practitioners and policy makers to identify what has and has not worked in the past, to adapt the results and findings to their own context and in turn to help others exploit their own results;
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Stimulate debate on ways of improving the conditions necessary for exploitation and dissemination and enhancing the applicability of results; Open up discussion on the most appropriate roles of the different stakeholders in harnessing and disseminating good practice; Help shape the European Commission's strategy and guidelines on exploitation and dissemination for future project promoters and policy makers